by Sax Rohmer
“In the big saloon, back there. Captain Beecher worked fast. Making for their posts right now.”
Flammario already was running ahead.
“One thing is important,” said Smith insistently. “Grab anyone that comes out.”
We overtook Flammario racing up a tree-shaded path towards a green-shuttered house from which no lights shone.
“How do we get in?” she panted. “Have you figured that out?”
“I have figured it out,” Smith replied, and I observed for the first time that he was carrying a handbag.
The front of the house was bathed in moonlight, but dense shrubbery grew up to it on the left and here I saw a porched door. We pulled up, watching and listening.
“Listen,” said Flammario. “This house is planned by an architect with a one-track mind. He does most of the building around here. Can you count on the police? Because when we break in, if I know Lou he will run for it.”
“The place will be surrounded in another minute,” snapped Smith irritably. “This door here in the shadow; does it lead to the kitchen?”
“Yes. And that is our way in. It is half glass. Smash it, and if the key is inside, we are through.”
“We could try,” muttered Smith.
We advanced, always in shadow, to the porch.
“Show a light, Kerrigan,” said Smith.
I shone the ray of a torch upon the door — then caught my breath. The glass panel was shattered to fragments, the door half open.
“My God!” groaned Smith, “We’re too late!”
* * * *
The kitchen quarters showed no evidence of disturbance. If utensils recently had been in use, someone had cleaned and put everything away. There was a spotless, white-tiled larder. In that immaculate domestic atmosphere the barbaric figure of Flammario, wrapped in her sables, those jungle eyes flashing from point to point, struck a note truly bizarre.
“They are here ahead of us,” she began, in a hoarse whisper. “That mongrel Paulo—”
“Quiet!” Smith said, imperatively yet in a low voice. “I want to listen.”
All the three of us stood there, listening.
Very remotely, sounds from the Canal reached me; shipping sounds which transported my thoughts to the early stages of this ghastly business which had led me to Colon. But immediately about us and inside the house was complete silence. I was about to speak when:
“Ssh!” whispered Smith.
Tensely I listened — and presently I heard the sound which had arrested his attention. It was a very faint creaking, and it came from somewhere upstairs.
“They are still here!” exploded Flammario. “Have your guns ready!”
With that she raced out of the kitchen into a passage beyond, switching up the lights as she went — a feat which surprised me at first, until I recollected her words about the architect with a one-track mind. I found myself in a dining-room very simply furnished. The curtains were drawn along the whole of one side and to these Flammario darted, wrenching them apart. I saw a garden dappled with molten silver where the moon poured down upon it. There was a terrace outside with cane chairs and tables; but there was no one there.
The atmosphere smelled stale as that of a room unused; and for some reason, in an automatic way, I unfastened the catch of one of the French windows and pulled it open. The perfume of some night-scented flower was borne in upon a light breeze. Even as I did so, I recognized that I was acting irrationally, that the place would be filled with nocturnal insects, and so reclosed the window.
“There it is again!” said Smith.
We fell silent, listening. Unmistakably, there was a sound of movement upstairs.
Smith was already dashing for a door at the other end of the room. Flammario overtook him and switched up a light in a square lobby. He started up a short flight of carpeted stairs so rapidly that I made a bad third. On the landing, the light of which was subdued, three doors offered — and they were all locked.
“This is where we want the copper!” said Flammario, huskily. “Blow that whistle of yours.”
“Quiet!”
I could hear her rapid breathing as she stood beside me in semi-darkness; for the only light was a sort of shaded lantern. One, two, five, ten seconds we waited; but the silence remained unbroken. I pictured Ardatha gagged and bound — I pictured her dead. I think in all my quest of her since she had revealed to me the truth of her slavery to Dr. Fu-Manchu, I had experienced no keen sense of longing to hear her voice, of terror that I should never hear it again.
“Blowing a lock out is not so easy, in fact as in fiction,” said Smith. “But these are not the good old-fashioned kind of doors — just matchwood and three-ply. See what a hundred and seventy pounds can do with that one, Kerrigan. I’ll tackle this.”
Pushing Flammario aside, I stood back from the door to within a stride of the staircase and then, shoulder down, hurled myself upon it.
A metallic rattle and a faint creak rewarded my first charge. Smith had attacked that immediately facing the staircase. He had had no greater success.
“Kick a panel out, Kerrigan!” he cried. “There may be a key inside.”
I tried, whilst the strange woman from The Passion Fruit Tree urged us on.
“Go to it, boys!” she screamed huskily. “Never weaken! We are here to kill!”
I did some damage to the door, which, although stout, was of unseasoned wood. Failing to break through I cursed under my breath, clenched my teeth and once more standing back hurled my weight upon it. So successful was the second attack that the door crashed open I pitched head first into darkness.
Staggering to my feet, breathing heavily, I groped my way back to the doorway to find the switch. As I turned up the light, a sound of banging and splintering came from the landing outside.
I was in an untidy office. The drawers of a roll-top desk had been broken open and the place showed other evidences of a hasty search. However, it was empty, and it seemed to possess no other door. I ran back on to the lading just as Smith had kicked his right heel through a panel.
Reaching in, he evidently found a key, for a moment later the door was thrown open. I followed him into what proved to be a small suite, sitting-room, bedroom and bathroom, fitted up in an effeminate and luxurious manner.
There were framed pictures of women, mostly cabaret artistes, upon the walls; a deep-cushioned divan; a shaded lamp held aloft by an ivory nymph in a niche behind it. Fine Persian carpets covered the floor: I saw leopard skins and exotic furniture. There was a faint perfume in the place.
“This is Lou’s new nest,” said Flammario breathlessly; “I know his tracks.” She ran into the bedroom. “Not a trace. No one has been here.”
“Where is Ardatha?” muttered Smith. “Come on; the third door.” But outside we pulled up at a hissed injunction, and stood a while silent.
“Do you hear it?” cried Flammario. “That rat, Lou, is hiding in the loft!”
“How do we get to the loft?” snapped Smith.
“Through this door. There are two other rooms beyond, and a back stair to the loft”
Turn and turn about, Smith and I hurled ourselves against the third door until at last with a splintering crash it gave. We crowded into a short passage, rooms right and left: both doors were wide open. In one which had shuttered windows we found the evidence for which we sought.
It was a bedroom with a bathroom attached. The lock of the door had been smashed in. The bed was disordered but the coverlet had not been turned down: in other words, no one had slept in the bed. Smith ran eagerly from point to point like a hound keen on the scent.
“This is where he had her locked up!” he cried.
“Sure!” snarled Flammario. “These cigarettes in the tray were smoked by a woman.”
“You are right! And after the door was crashed in, the woman was dragged out. It is easy enough to reconstruct the scene. And, hello, what have we here?”
I saw something glittering at his fee
t as, stooping, he picked up a ring — a beautifully-cut scarab of lapis lazuli set in a dull gold band. At sight of it I knew — and what I knew chilled me. No further possibility of doubt remained.
It was Ardatha’s ring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. FLAMMARIO’S CLOAK SLIPS
“She was conscious when they carried her off,” said Smith. “This ring was left as a clue. A consolation to know that they did not drug her.”
But Flammario was already out in the passage which, as I saw now, terminated on a landing leading up to a back staircase. The stair ended before a small door.
We ran up. The landing before the door was so narrow as to give little purchase for an attack, but:
“There’s no metal surround to this keyhole,” said Smith. “The door is fast. I shall try to shoot the lock out… Ssh! Listen!”
He and I stood still for a moment, listening again. A subdued scrambling sound which might almost have been made by a rat came to my ears.
“Here goes!” snapped Smith.
It was as he fired once, twice, and muffled detonations echoed weirdly about the place that I thought of Flammario — turned and found she was not there!
“Smith!” I cried, “Flammario has gone!”
“Can’t help that!” he cried. “Those shots will have brought up the raid squad.”
I followed him into a store-room lighted by a single lamp suspended from rafters. It contained nothing more than the usual lumber of suburban households, representing, I suspected some of the effects of the former occupant. Then I saw something else.
There was one window, a low gable window. That part of it made to open was not wide enough to permit the passage of a man’s body, but the frame of the larger part beneath had been forced out of place; fragments of glass lay on the floor, suggesting that, leaning through the opening above, someone who had been in the attic had knocked the glass in from the outside and then forced the sash. As Smith craned out:
“A balcony just below,” he reported, “running outside those rooms we have already seen. And, hello! — a stair up to it from the garden!”
He turned and ran to the door.
“You understand, Kerrigan?” he cried. “Fu-Manchu’s thugs got here before us! The man Cabot, who had Ardatha locked in that room below, bolted up here to save himself. What he had planned to do he has done: forced a way through this window, dropped on to the balcony below and, unless the police catch him — made a clean get-away!”
We were running along the lower passage now, making for the staircase.
A theory to account for the remarkable behaviour of Flammario at the moment that Smith and I had entered the loft had just begun to form in my mind as we ran down the stairs, across, and out through the kitchen to the back porch. The balcony from which the fugitive had made his escape ran along this side of the house. As we came into the darkness there, Smith, a pace ahead of me, pulled suddenly and grasped my wrist with a grip that hurt.
A high, piercing shriek, followed by gurgling, sobbing sounds split the silence frightfully.
As that dreadful cry died away I heard a shout, a sound of running footsteps. The police were closing in. Two paces forward we moved hesitantly, and there, half in shadow and half silhouetted against a silver curtain of moonlight, I saw Flammario. She stood at the foot of the steps leading down from the balcony. Her cloak had slipped: she looked like a sculptured Fury.
Hearing us, she turned in our direction. I could see the glitter of her amber eyes. Then, stepping into the shadows at her feet she retrieved the sable cloak, and threw it about her shoulders.
“I reckon that balances our account, Lou,” she panted.
Captain Beecher raced up to join us, followed by two other police officers, as a ray from Smith’s torch shone fully down upon a man who lay there. He was prone, but in falling had twisted his head sideways, as if at the moment that death came he had looked swiftly behind him. Staring eyes held a question which had been horribly answered.
It was the man of Panama.
His fingers were embedded in the turf on which he lay, and the hilt of a dagger decorated with silver which glittered evilly in the light, protruded squarely from between his shoulder-blades.
Police Captain Beecher glanced from the dead man to the fur-wrapped figure of Flammario, whose tawny eyes regarded him contemptuously.
“So we have you on the books at last!”
“Forget it!” rapped Smith; “she won’t run away. The girl, the girl who was captive here, has been carried off. She must not be smuggled out of Colon. Advise the port. Hold all outgoing shipping till further orders. Spare no efforts.”
But what with frustrated hopes and new fears, such a cloak of misery had descended upon me that I could not think consistently. There was movement all about; the issuing of rapid orders; men hurrying away. And presently, reaching me as if from a distance, came Smith’s words:
“Take care of Flammario. After all, she has done her best for us. Return straight to the hotel.”
A hand touched my arm. I looked into brilliant amber eyes. “Drive me back, please,” said Flammario, “or I shall be late for my show.”
Of what she said to me on the way back, this red-handed murderess, I recollect not one word. I know that her arms were about me. I presume it was a normal gesture employed whenever she found herself alone in a man’s company. I think, just before we reached the side entrance to The Passion Fruit Tree, that she kissed me on the lips, that I started back. She laughed huskily. I would have left her at the door, but:
“You have lost your girl friend,” she said; “you must want a drink.” I think in her half-savage way she was trying to be sympathetic. “Go through there to the bar. If you wait, I have drink with you.”
As she ran towards her dressing-room, I opened the back door to the bar. It was true that suddenly, and only at that moment, did I realize how badly I needed a stiff brandy and soda. The barman turned swiftly, but recognizing me, allowed me to pass.
There was no one in the bar; and he had just placed my drink before me when the lights went out.
Morbid curiosity induced me to walk out on to the balcony. A subdued, excited hum of conversation rose from below: evidently there had been other arrivals. Then, to the muted strains of the unseen band, Flammario entered.
She stood there picked up by the lime and slowly began to dance — her lips set in the eternal, voluptuous smile of the African dancers of all time, the smile which lives for ever upon the painted walls of Ancient Egypt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. A GREEN HAND
“Smith!” I said, “he’s not dying.”
“Thank God, no.”
He and I stood looking down at Sir Lionel Barton where he lay livid, his breathing scarcely perceptible. I turned to a man wearing a white jacket who stood at the front of the bed.
“You are sure, doctor?”
Dr. Andrews nodded and his smile was reassuring.
“He’s had an emetic and I’ve washed him out with permanganate of potassium,” he replied. “Also, I’ve poured coffee down his throat — very strong. Fortunately he has a constitution like a bullock. Oh, he’ll be all right. I have given him a shot of atropine. We’ll have him round before long.”
“But how,” I said, looking about from face to face, “did this happen? What of the police officer on duty outside?”
“Went the same way!” replied Dr. Andrews; “but not for the same reason; nor is he responding so well.”
“How do you account for that?”
“You see” — the doctor took up a tumbler from a side-table— “this contains whisky, and also (I have tested it) a big shot of opium. In other words. Sir Lionel Barton has swallowed a narcotic and I have thoroughly washed him out. But the sergeant of police smoked a drugged cigarette.”
“What!”
“Yes,” snapped Smith. “I have the remains of the packet: they are all drugged.”
“But surely he could taste it?”
“No.” The
physician shook his head. “Indian hemp was used in this case, and the brand of cigarette was of a character which—” he shrugged his shoulders— “would disguise almost anything.”
“But where could the man have obtained these cigarettes?”
“Don’t ask me, Kerrigan,” said Smith wearily. “As well ask why Barton, alone in these apartments, permitted someone to drug his whisky.”
“But was he alone here when you returned?”
“He was found alone. I was recalled from police headquarters, and from there I phoned you. They had discovered the police sergeant unconscious in the corridor. Naturally the management came in here, and found Barton.”
“Where was he?”
“In an armchair in the sitting-room, completely unconscious, with that glass beside him.”
“And?”
“Yes! We have lost our hostage, Kerrigan. The marmoset has gone.”
“But, Smith!” I cried, desperately, “it doesn’t seem humanly possible!”
“Anything is possible when one is dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The fact which we have to face is that it has happened. Two men, fully capable of taking care of themselves, fully on the alert, are drugged. Someone, unseen by anybody in the hotel, gains access to these rooms, removes the cage containing the marmoset and lowers it out of the sitting-room window, which I found open, to someone else waiting in the garden below. At that late hour the garden would be deserted. In short, the rest of the matter is simple.”
“Thank God, old Barton has survived,” I said. “But heaven help us all — we are fighting a phantom… Ardatha!”
Smith leaned across the bed on which the unconscious man lay and grasped my shoulder.
“Fu-Manchu has recovered her. It may be an odd thing to say, when speaking of the greatest power for evil living in the world today, but for my part I would rather think of her with the Doctor than with—”
“Lou Cabot? Yes, I agree.”
“In taking no part in your conversation, gentlemen,” said Dr. Andrews, “I am actuated by a very simple motive. I don’t know what you are talking about. That there is or was someone called Dr. Fu-Manchu I seem to have heard, certainly. In what way he is associated with my two patients I do not know. But regarding Lou Cabot — I presume you refer to the proprietor of The Passion Fruit Tree — you touch upon familiar territory. I have had the doubtful honour of attending this man on more than one occasion.”
